


aerodynamic

by luluhrh



Category: Dead Poets Society
Genre: Basically What Happens in the Movie Happens and it’s Sad, Canon Compliant, Depression, M/M, Neil is Unhappy, Neil is Very Gay for Todd, Neil’s Dad is a Dick, Probable Overuse of Metaphor, Sad Ending, Suicidal Thoughts, suicide is implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 15:53:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15644007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luluhrh/pseuds/luluhrh
Summary: An aerodynamic desk set. The world has seen stranger things.Or, Neil isn’t a poet, but he thinks he might be able to fly.





	aerodynamic

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work on this site. Never thought it would be a DPS fic, to be perfectly honest, but I’m actually proud of this work, so I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> WARNING: suicidal thoughts, implied suicide, don’t read this if you’re uncomfortable with that or are afraid it might be triggering.

An aerodynamic desk set. The world has seen stranger things. An unmanned flight of a thoughtless gift into the night.

Neil feels like he could fly, too, if he put his mind to it. Todd laughs and smiles at Neil’s jokes, watches papers scatter across the courtyard with gleeful abandon, and Neil thinks that he could fly if only Todd kept smiling like that.

It’s not the first time Neil has thought that he might try to fly, but it’s the first time he believes there might be some other outcome than falling.

“You’ll get another one next year,” Neil says, and it makes Todd grin and giggle. Neil isn’t a poet, but if he was, he’d make sonnets out of Todd’s smile.

-/-

Keating tells Neil to talk to his father, and Neil can’t help but laugh. He’s crying, but it sneaks out of him, harsh humor in the face of an impossible task.

He tells Keating so, tells him that he can’t tell his father how he feels because his feelings don’t matter, and what his father does is for Neil’s own good.

It feels like a lie. Another act. Maybe Neil got his natural skill for theatre from his father, because “it’s for your own good” is the biggest falsehood Neil has ever been told. And, like with theater, everyone knows it’s not real, the veneer of a supportive, happy family, but it’s accepted. It’s expected. Play your roles, boys and girls.

Only Neil’s tired of this act. He’s found a better one, and he knows that if this gets taken away, if he only has one chance at what he is certain is true happiness, he won’t survive going back. He can’t.

He doesn’t tell this to Mr. Keating. The man looks worried enough already, and Neil doesn’t want his teacher to know about the storm clouds swirling ever closer that bear the sound of his father’s rumbling disapproval.

Neil isn’t a poet. He’s just losing a battle that he knew the outcome of the moment it began.

-/-

Playing Puck feels like liberation.

Neil isn’t a poet. Not like those in Five Centuries, not like Todd could be one day with his brilliant words that came from nowhere and were perfect. Neil can lie, but he can’t find the words for truth the way they can.

No, Neil is an actor. Neil was born to live the truths of others, but not the way his father demands. Neil can’t make truth, but he can choose it from the truths that have already been written. Five centuries of truth for him to peruse and decide who he is going to play.

He can choose his own truth. He can choose a hundred, a thousand, a million of them. So many that aren’t his father’s.

Neil isn’t a doctor. Neil isn’t his father’s puppet.

Neil is a fairy, a trickster, a meddling imp with a knack for mischief. Neil is Robin Goodfellow. Neil is Puck.

During a quieter scene, where Neil is lurking in the background, he spots Todd. He is smiling. He is radiant.

Neil is flying.

-/-

Neil’s father stands tall as a mountain. Unmoving. Unyielding. Cold and cruel and insurmountable.

Maybe Neil is a poet after all, but he isn’t a mountaineer. He can’t conquer his father. What’s one man against a geological feature? An ant at most. Less than an ant. Nearly nothing.

Neil doesn’t feel like nothing. He feels like the thoughtless gift of an aerodynamic desk set: he was useless and unwanted until someone foolish said he could fly, said he wanted to fly, and then he was thrown off the roof to test that theory. And while in the air, soaring above the courtyard, he thought that he could do it. He thought he could escape into the sky, powered by a beautiful boy’s smile and a dream of living the truth he chose.

And then he fell apart mid-air. He had forgotten that the mountain was there and had crashed right into it, and now he was spiraling, a thousand blank papers rustling in the wind as they drifted downwards to the hard, cold earth.

Yes, Neil thinks to himself as he stands at his window, gazing into the night. A crown of thorns rests on his head. Maybe I am a poet.

-/-

There’s only one place left to go now.

Neil is falling, falling, he can’t fly and he never could-

He can’t allow himself to bend to the will of the mountain, not again, never again, he refuses to be forced to climb up to the peak that is assigned to him and live his father’s dream-

Neil isn’t a doctor, Neil isn’t his father, Neil isn’t the dutiful son or the perfect student or the person everyone else sees when they look at him-

Neil is Robin, someone cut off his wings-

Neil is a martyr in a crown of thorns-

Neil is an actor exiting the stage-

Shakespeare once said it: All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.

Neil played his part. He’s done.

He stares down at his father’s gun wrapped in a worn shirt and knows, with the certainty of five centuries of truth, that he is a poet. And soon, he will join the ranks of those that came before him.

He lifts the bundle to his temple and keeps his eyes wide open.


End file.
